A great deal of business documents are stored as electronic files. These files are generally created via document processing applications, such as, for example, a Microsoft® Word word processing application, a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet application, a WordPerfect® word processing application, Mircosoft® PowerPoint® presentation application, and the like. These applications store the documents as electronic files in various formats, such as, for example, a Microsoft® Word file format, a Microsoft® Excel file format, a WordPerfect® file format, and the like. The files include digital content items (e.g., text strings, graphics, and the like) and display formatting information (e.g., font styles, alignment, and the like) of how to print and display the digital content items as a document. Such display formatting information often makes the document much easier for a user to read and comprehend.
It would be convenient if the user could access documents (in a formatted form) from a user/client computer via the Internet. To this end, various approaches have been taken, each of which, however, suffers from some disadvantage. A straightforward approach is to simply transmit the file over the Internet to the client computer; however, to display the file as a document, the client computer typically needs to have the same word processing application that originally created the file. Also, the client computer typically needs to have the same version of the word processing application.
Another approach includes converting a document to an image file and transmitting the image file over the Internet to the client computer (e.g., such as may be implemented with Adobe® Acrobat® software). A disadvantage with this approach is that, to display the image file as a document, the client computer typically needs an image displaying application. Also, the client computer typically needs to have a version of the image displaying application that corresponds to the application that converted the document to the image file. Moreover, image files are typically larger than word processing files and therefore, may take longer to be transmitted to the client computer. Further, procuring and maintaining such word processing and image displaying applications may become prohibitively expensive for a user.
Another option is to convert files to Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files that can be transmitted over the Internet and displayed as a document by a conventional Internet browser on the client computer. The difficulty with this option is in converting the files to HTML files that display with an acceptable display format. One technique is manual conversion, which is tantamount to creating the HTML files from scratch and therefore, is generally prohibitively time consuming. Another technique is to use a conversion tool; however, existing conversion tools typically do not strictly comply with HTML. Therefore, such conversion tools often yield files that, when displayed as documents on a browser, are difficult for the user to read.
In view of the foregoing, there is a need for a method and system for converting files to files that display with a particular display format.